Apple & Tesla: The Perfect Couple?

Recent reports on a potential liaison between Apple and electric carmaker Tesla elicited a strong echo in the media.

In the last couple of days, reports on a potential liaison between Apple and electric carmaker Tesla elicited a strong echo in the media. These reports are just the distant harbingers of a major shake-up in the automotive industry.

The San Francisco Chronicle got the ball rolling when it published a report about a meeting between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple's Adrian Perica who oversees the computer giant's acquisitions.

Though the meeting took place already in April 2013, the Silicon Valley seismometers are extremely sensitive (a late result of Andy Grove's statement that "Only the Paranoid Survive") and the report created quite a stir.

Now Tesla's Musk -- probably against his intention -- poured oil into the flames when he declined a blunt denial in a Bloomberg TV interview upon the question if Tesla is for sale. Instead, he manoeuvred around -- he admitted that there have been talks between Tesla and Apple but he declined to elaborate.

When the interviewer gave him the direct question, "Are you for sale?" he did not answer with a clear "yes" or "no" but instead he said that "such a sale would be very unlikely," leaving lots of space for the interested public to speculate over his real intentions.

But a sale of Tesla to Apple is not so much the question. The simple fact that an IT company and a carmaker are discussing anything that might be even distantly related to an acquisition is very remarkable. Things are becoming a bit more plausible if one takes into consideration that Apple is not just a manufacturer of computers and cellphones and Tesla not just a carmaker.

Apple is the icon of the digital lifestyle, and in one sense Tesla is not much different -- electric cars are an emerging symbol for a new kind of mobility. Green, environmentally conscious, high-tech... and expensive.

This is already one common denominator in a potential marriage between these two companies: Both players are appealing up-market buyers -- early adopters of technology with deep pockets.

Of course, this is not enough to justify a potential takeover. But in times when analysts label cars (and even more so, electric cars) as "the ultimate mobile terminal" for IT services, it is just logical that IT technology players increasingly watch out for opportunities to occupy this promising market place.

Cars, and even more so, electric cars, will be the place to offer IT-based services of the future. This starts with navigation-related services (location-based online advertising, for instance), continues with behaviour-based, pay-as-you-drive car insurance and enhanced real-time traffic information and does not end with multi-modal transport.

Of course, all these services require hardware, software, and wireless communications. But these elements are just the technological foundations for new business models. It is no wonder that it was just business model innovator Google who came up as the first IT company with the idea of selling (automatic) cars, and I am sure we will witness more moves from this side.

But, back to our original question: Would Tesla and Apple be the perfect couple? There have been repeated rumours that BMW aired a similar interest already years ago -- something the carmaker does not comment either, much like Tesla's founder Elon Musk in his recent Bloomberg interview. To me, one thing is clear: The perfect partner for Apple will be not just a manufacturer of conventional cars. It has to be an electric car company (for the reasons described above) and it has to be a company with strong intellectual and emotional ties into IT and digital thinking.

Plus, it has to be someone who does not insist in calling the tune in the duo with a company as self-assertive as Apple. The latter condition, by the way, rules out more or less all established carmakers -- in particular the German premium players who would never bow to an IT company.

Well, that is, for the time being. The IT race in the automotive realm is on. No matter how the outcome in the affair between Tesla and Apple, we will see more of them. And this could easily change the balance of power between IT-related service providers and traditional carmakers, premium or not.

— Christoph Hammerschmidt is automotive editor at EE Times Europe. This story first appeared on their website.

1. flash worked HORRIBLY on touch screen devices when the ipad first came out. Apple knew this and didn't want people put off. Flash content was simply not designed for touchscreens (back then especially). It was prudent of apple to avoid the bad experiences and push developers to use a better tool. I jailbroke an ipad and used flash a couple times, it was infuriatingly unpleasant.

2. I DID jailbreak mine because I HATE a company telling me what I can or can't do with hardware I own. If this hardware is capable of doing a thing, they shouldn't be stopping me from doing it.

So, I guess I agree with you that it was rude of them to presume they know better than me, but I completely see why they did it, and might have made that same decision if it were me in charge. Maybe I would have left it enabled but popped up a big nasty warning that, unless designed for a touch interface, it would not function correctly.

Yes, I've heard that reaction from others, but isn't it entirely beside the point? No one was asking Apple to develop web content using Flash. But to leave the users in the lurch, with some nonsense about low efficiency, at a time when just about all web video required a Flash player, is inexcusable.

I could say the same thing about roads. They can be terribly unsafe. Let's applaud the iCar for not being designed to use them!

If you've been a web developer at any point in the past, you would whole heartedly applaud them for dumping that horrible beast of flash. There were lots of fun things made with that horrible horrible tool, but it can go away forever and everyone will be better off.

I was actually referring to iPhones and iPads summarily dropping Flash, *the* de-facto standard still today, with some concocted excuse about inefficiency, and a promise that the world was moving to HTML5 anyway.

Don't know the answer to your question. What I do know is that some Internet radio stations do not use MP3, AAC+, Real, or WMA, so they won't play on devices that don't also support Flash and Silverlight. I can sort of see the problem faced by designers of single-purpose, low cost Internet appliances. What I can't buy is the attitude Apple had when they dropped Flash.

I was going to comment that my ipod would play anything, and I loaded music on it using a 3rd party application. However, I'm not sure if you can do that anymore. Can you use anything other than itunes to put music on an apple product now? I love my iphone (yes, yes, I've tried android phones, MANY of them), but I HATE itunes.

I can't even imagine apple buying tesla completely. While it is cute to talk about and imagine the internet buzzing about, it just seems incredibly unlikely. It would be much more feasible to assume apple would invest and contribute some design, or possibly improve the interface.

Imagine, for example, their partial ownership of pixar. We didn't see iMovies and there was no apple lock in.

I loved the tesla model S. However, I hated that giant ugly flat panel. Its like our display devices haven't caught up to the elegance that is designed into the dash or something. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

Since Apple has determined that existing roads are inefficiently designed, the new iCar will only travel on Apple roads. But all the Apple fanboys are happy, assuring us that these are the roads of the future anyway.

Honestly, I can see no combination better than Tesla and Apple, to get the press all a-twitter.